Eight Girls Taking Pictures (58 page)

Letters exchanged by Imogen Cunningham and Roi Partridge can be found in the Imogen Cunningham Papers at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. For more information, please contact the Imogen Cunningham Trust at [email protected]. I quoted from the following letters:

Roi Partridge to Imogen Cunningham, July 24, 1917

Roi Partridge to Imogen Cunningham, May 28, 1914

Roi Partridge to Imogen Cunningham, August 13, 1914

Imogen Cunningham to Roi Partridge, July 6, 1917

Imogen Cunningham to Roi Partridge, April 8, 1934

Writing is a solitary business, but it takes a crack team of finely trained experts to make a book. I could not ask for a better agent (or friend) than Joy Harris, as well as everyone at the Joy Harris Literary Agency. Thank you, Susan Moldow, for traveling to Barcelona. And thank you, thank you, thank you to my editor, the wonderful Whitney Frick, whose intelligence, insight, and impressively hard work have made this book better every step of the way. This may sound like hyperbole but, trust me, it’s not.

I am deeply grateful to the writers of the biographies I consulted and of the monographs I studied (please see the Select Bibliography).

Along those same lines, I’d like to thank Meg Partridge for her incredible generosity in allowing me to use Imogen Cunningham’s letters (and for copies of archival material), and likewise to Mary Engel for her support in the Ruth Orkin chapter.

A huge thank-you to Sandra Phillips and Erin O’ Toole at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who kindly answered every last one of my million questions.

There are eight images in this book, and a number of people were involved with securing those pictures. In addition to Meg Partridge, Mary Engel, and Lawrence N. Hole—all of whom graciously allowed use of their respective archives’ images—I’d like to thank Chelsea Rhadigan at ARS/NY. It was my great good luck that led me to Jorge Mara and to Camille Solyagua, photographer extraordinaire (
www.camillesolyagua.com
), for their picture contributions.

In Portland, I want to thank Ed Schonneker for patiently instructing me in the intricacies of twentieth-century cameras, some almost one hundred years old. And to Jake, Zeb, and Faulkner at Blue Moon Camera & Machine for allowing me to get my hands on
their
vintage cameras. Also to Brian and Rebecca Newell, Kiyomi Shimada, and Aimee Albrecht.

In other areas of my professional life, I am indebted to everyone at
Tin House
magazine for their support over the years. And to Elissa Shappell, Gail Tsukiyama, Diana Abu-Jaber, Aimee Bender, Michael Chabon, David Shields, Carolyn See, David Leavitt, and the fabulous Peter Rock. And to the excellent editor Peggy McMullen at
The Oregonian.
And to Lisa Steinman, Jay Dickson, and Peter Steinberger. And Jane Anderson and Jesús Carles de Vilallonga. And finally, to Katherine Slusher, for sharing her knowledge of photography, her time and, most important, her friendship.

Thank you to Richard Riley, who has earned his own line.

Thank you to my mother, Constance Yambert, my brother, Bill Otto, and sister, Sloane Lowell. Also, Antoinette Sedoux; Michael Brod; Jan Novotny; Simone Sedoux; Ana Castaneda; and Tullio di Nunzio (Mr. Nordstrom). And to Bill and Jo Dean for the vacations and brunches and friendship, even if their mantra is too much, too late, and too far.

And thank you to the marvelous John San Agustin, one of the kindest people I know.

Last, but never least, the twin loves of my life, John and Sam Morganfield Riley. The apt metaphor here would be that life is a plane flight and no matter how neurotic I am as a seatmate, they would never sit anywhere but by my side.

The Unmade Bed,
1957 © 1957, 2012 Imogen Cunningham Trust

Machine Worker in Summer
, 1937 © Yevonde Portrait Archive

Mella’s Typewriter, or La Técnica
, 1928. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

À l’Heure de l’Observatoire, les Amoureux (Observatory Time, the Lovers),
1936 © Man Ray Trust / ADAGP—ARS / Telimage—2012

Fotomontaje de GRETE STERN—
“Artículos eléctricos para el hogar”
—Sueño N°1

Central Park South Skyline
, circa late ’50s, by Ruth Orkin. © 2012 Ruth Orkin Photo Archive

Phoenix on Her Side,
1968 © 1968, 2012 Imogen Cunningham Trust

Crescent Moon #4,
1998 © Camille Solyagua

The lines from “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond” Copyright 1931, © 1959, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1979 by George James Firmage. The lines from “anyone lived in a pretty how town” Copyright 1940, © 1968, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust, from
Complete Poems 1904–1962
by E.E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Company.

“It was a face which darkness could kill” (#8) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from
A Coney Island of the Mind,
copyright © 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

“Today” from
The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara
by Frank O’Hara, edited by Donald Allen, copyright © 1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara, copyright renewed 1999 by Maureen O’Hara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Am I to become profligate as if I were blond?” from
The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara
by Frank O’Hara, copyright © 1957 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic Publishers.

ALSO BY WHITNEY OTTO

How to Make an American Quilt

Now You See Her

The Passion Dream Book

A Collection of Beauties at the Height of Their Popularity

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